Praying With Paul Mostra

Sovereign God

Prayer uniquely captures the tension between God’s sovereignty and our responsibility to act. Jesus tells us that “Your Father knows what you need before you ask him” (Matt. 6:8), and James insists that “You do not have, because you do not ask” (Jas. 4:2). God is both personal (our Father) and transcendent (in heaven), and He carries out His sovereign work through personal means, particularly the prayers
of His people. We must hold together the biblical truths that God is all-powerful and in total control and that we’re responsible to act in accord with His revealed will. When we do so, these truths give us remarkable confidence to pray and also direction for how to pray to the sovereign God and what sorts of things to ask for. 

Scripture presents God as sovereign and all-powerful. God is the Creator of solar systems and subatomic particles. God declares the end from the beginning and accomplishes all His purposes (see Isa. 46:10). And yet this sovereign God hears and responds to His people’s prayers. According to Exodus 2:23-25, Israel’s “cry for rescue from slavery came up to God. And God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob. God saw the people of Israel—and God knew.” Manasseh “prayed to him, and God was moved by his entreaty and heard his plea” (2 Chron. 33:13). Daniel perceived from Jeremiah’s writings that God promised to bring the exile to an end after 70 years, and so he turned his face to the Lord God, “seeking him by prayer and pleas for mercy with fasting and sackcloth and ashes” (Dan. 9:3). God then sends His angel to give Daniel insight and understanding, and He brings Judah’s exile to an end. 

The prayers of God’s people are a crucial means by which He chooses to execute His sovereign purposes. In Ephesians 1, Paul moves seamlessly from praising God who accomplishes “all things according to the counsel of his will, … to the praise of his glory” (vv. 11,14) to petitioning God to carry out His glorious purposes in the church (vv. 22-23).

This prayer highlights God’s sovereign work and serves as a model for praying to the sovereign, personal God. Paul’s prayer stimulates us to reflect deeply on God’s powerful work in raising Jesus from the dead and in transforming Christians from the inside out. 

 Paul prays that Christians might know God better and grasp with enlightened eyes truths concerning their glorious hope, their new identity as God’s inheritance, and God’s continuing, powerful work in their lives. Additionally, Ephesians 1 rehearses the sovereign God’s dramatic displays of power in Jesus’ resurrection, exaltation, and sovereign rule over all things, which He exercises for the church.